LM Studio 0.4.0 - Release Notes

Welcome to LM Studio 0.4.0 👾!

We're excited to introduce the next generation of LM Studio.
New features include:
- llmster: the LM Studio Daemon for headless deployments w/o GUI on servers or cloud instances
- Parallel inference requests (instead of queued) for high throughput use cases
- New stateful REST API with local MCP server support - POST /v1/chat
- A completely revamped UI experience ✨

Build 18

Fixed a bug where sometimes vision models would not accept images

Build 17

MCPs will now only be loaded when needed, instead of at app startup
Fixed a bug where some fields in app settings could get reset after update

Build 16

New icons and placements for Discover, My Models buttons
Fixed a bug where generators wouldn't show in the top bar model picker when selected
Fixed a bug which prevented additional quantizations from being downloaded for staff pick models that were already downloaded
Fixed a bug where lms import will sometimes not work properly if it llmster (daemon) is also installed
Fixed a bug in /api/v1/chat that caused server errors when inputs were empty or top_k exceeded 500
Fixed a bug where lms ls and lms load sometimes would fail after waking up the LM Studio service
Fixed a bug where sometimes token counting would not work properly for gpt-oss models

Build 15

Introduce Parallel Requests with Continuous Batching 🚀
- When loading a model, you can now select n_parallel to allow multiple requests to be processed in parallel.
- When enabled, instead of queuing requests one by one, the model will process up to N requests simultaneously.
- By default, parallel slots are set to 4 (with unified KV set to true, which should result in no additional memory overhead).
- This is supported for LM Studio's llama.cpp engine, with MLX coming later.
Introducing Split View in Chat: view two chats side by side.
- Drag and drop chat tabs to either half of the window to split the view.
- Close one side of the split view with the 'x' button in the top right of each pane.
Introducing 🔧 Developer Mode: a simplification of the previous Developer/Power User/User 3 mode switch.
- Developer Mode combines the previous Developer and Power User modes into a single mode with all advanced features enabled.
- You can turn on Developer Mode in Settings > Developer.
New setting: enforce allowing only one new empty chat at a time (default: enabled)
- Change in Settings > Chat
New 🔭 Model Search experience
- Access via the 🔍 button on the top right or by pressing Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + M
- Model format filter preferences persist between app restarts
- Modal is resizable and remembers its size between app restarts
Limit number of open tabs to 1 per pane. Support showing 2 side-by-side chat tabs.
- Selecting a new chat replaces the current tab in that pane.
Add button to create a new chat in the sidebar
Pressing Cmd/Ctrl + L while the model picker is open will dismiss it
On narrow window size show right hand sidebar as an ephemeral overlay
Support for the LFM2 tool call format
CLI now uses commit hash for versioning instead of semantic version numbers
Updates to UI details in hardware settings
Fixed a bug where moving large number of conversations would sometimes only move part of them
Fixed a bug where lms ls sometimes would show incomplete list of models on startup
Fixed a bug in deleting tool confirmation preferences in settings
Fixed a UI bug in app onboarding
Fixed a visual bug in Models Table selected row affecting the Architecture and Format columns
Fixed a bug where undoing pasted content in chat input would not work as expected
Fixed a bug where a leading decimal in a numeric input would parse as a 0
Fixed a bug rendering multiple images in a conversation message
Fixed a bug where a documentation sidebar section would sometimes get stuck in expanded state
Fixed a bug where chat names would sometime be empty
Fixed a visual bug in rendering keyboard shortcuts on Windows and Linux
Fixed a bug where model loader would sometimes close due to mouse move shortly after opening
Fixed a bug rendering titles in preset conflict resolver dialog
Fixed a bug where reloading with new load parameters would not apply next time the same model is used for a chat
Fixed a bug where the model loading will get stuck if the cpu moe slider is maxed out
Fixed a bug where exporting chats with very large images to PDF would fail
Fixed a responsive UI overlap bug in the app header
[Windows] Fixed a bug where the default embedding model will not be available after in-app update
Adds download, copy, and reveal in working directory buttons to generated images in chat

Build 14

(Build 14 was skipped)

Build 13

App setting to control primary navigation position: 'top' or 'left'
[Mac] New tray menu icon 👾 (experimental, might change)
/api/v1 endpoints and /v1/responses API now return better formatted errors
Significantly reduce the size of the app update asset

Build 12

Bugfix: New chats to be created with the same model as the previously focused chat
Bring back gear button to change load parameters for currently loaded model
Bring back context fullness indicator and current input token counter
New in My Models: right-click on tab header to choose which columns to show/hide
New in My Models: Capabilities and Format columns
Fixed a flicker in model picker floating panel upon first open
- P.S. you can open the model picker from anywhere in the app with Cmd/Ctrl + L
Fixed focus + Enter on Eject button not working inside model picker
Updated chat terminal and messages colors and style
Fixed dragging and dropping chats/folders in the sidebar

Build 11

✨👾 Completely revamped UI - this is a work in progress, give us feedback!
[CLI] New lms chat experience!
- Support slash commands, thinking highlighting and pasting larger content
- Slash commands available: /model, /download, /system-prompt, /help and /exit
[CLI] New: lms runtime survey to print info about available GPUs!
FunctionGemma support
Added a slider to control n_cpu_moe
New REST API endpoint: api/v1/models/unload to unload models
Breaking change: in api/v1/models/load endpoint response, introduced in this beta, model_instance_id has been renamed to instance_id.
Display live processing status for each loaded LLM on the Developer page
- Prompt processing progress percentage → token generation count
Improved PDF rendering quality for tool requests and responses
Significantly increased the reliability and speed of deleting multiple chats at once
Updated style of chat message generation info
Updated layout of Hardware settings page and other settings rows
Fixed a bug where sometimes models are indexed before all files are downloaded
Fixed a bug where exporting larger PDFs would sometimes fail
Fixed a bug where pressing the chat clear hotkey multiple times would open multiple confirmation dialogs
Fixed a bug where pressing the chat clear hotkey would sometimes duplicate the chat
Fixed a bug where pressing the duplicate hotkey on the release notes would create a glitched chat tab
Fixed a bug where lms help would not work
Fixed a bug where deletion models or canceling downloads would leave behind empty folders
Fixed a styling bug in the GPU section on the Hardware page
[MLX] Fixed a bug where the bf16 model format was not recognized as a valid quantization

Build 10

(Build 10 was skipped)

Build 9

(Build 9 was skipped)

Build 8

Fixed a bug where the default system prompt was still sent to the model even after the system prompt field was cleared.
Fixed a bug where exported chats did not include the correct system prompt.
Fixed a bug where the token count was incorrect when a default system prompt existed but the system prompt field was cleared.
Fix a bug where sometimes the tool call results are not being added to the context correctly
Fix chat clearing with hotkey (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Option/Alt + D) would clear wrong chat
Fix a bug where Ctrl/Cmd + N would sometimes create two new chats
Updated style for Integrations panel and select
Fixed cURL copy button for embedding models displaying additional incorrect requests
Fix "ghost chats" caused by moving conversations/deleting conversations

Build 7

Fix jinja prompt formatting bug for some models where EOS tokens were not being included properly
Bring back release notes viewer for Runtime available update
Prevent tooltip from staying open when hovering tooltip content
Fix a bug in deleting multiple chats at once
Minor fix to overlapping labels in model loader
Support for EssentialAI's rnj-1 model

Build 6

Fixed a bug where Qwen3-Next user messages would not appear in formatted prompts properly

Build 5

Fixed a bug where quickly deleting multiples conversations will sometimes soft-lock the app
Fixed another bug that prevented the last remaining open tab from being closed

Build 4

Fixed a bug where the last remaining open tab sometimes could not be closed
Fixed a bug where lms log stream would exit immediately
Fixed a bug where the server port would get printed as [object Object]
Image validation checks in v1/chat and v1/responses REST API now run without model loading
Fixed a bug where images without extensions were not classified correctly
Fix bug in move-to-trash onboarding dialog radio selection where some parts of the label were not clickable
Fix several clickable areas bugs in Settings windows buttons
Fixed a bug where certain settings may get adjusted unexpectedly when using llmster (for example, the JIT model loading may become disabled)
New and improved Runtime page style and structure
Fixes a bug where guardrail settings were not showing up in User UI mode
Fixed a bug where lms log stream would exit immediately

Build 3

Introducing 'llmster': the LM Studio Daemon!
- True headless, no GUI version of the process that powers LM Studio
- Run it on servers, cloud instances, or any machine without a graphical interface
- Load models on CPU/GPU and serve them, use via lms CLI or our APIs
- To install:
  - Linux/Mac: curl -fsSL https://lmstudio.ai/install.sh | bash
  - Windows: irm https://lmstudio.ai/install.ps1 | iex
Support for MistralAI Ministral models (3B, 8B, 13B)
Improved lms output and help messages style. Run lms --help to explore!
Get llama.cpp level logs with lms log stream -s runtime in the terminal
lms get interactive mode now shows the latest model catalog options
New and improved style for Downloads panel
New and improved style for App Settings
We're trying something out: Model search now in its own tab
- still iterating on the UI for this page, please give us feedback!

Build 2

Show release notes in a dedicated tab after app updates
Add support to display images in exported PDFs and exported markdown files
Quick Docs is now Developer Docs, with refreshed documentation and direct access from the welcome page.
Allow creating permission tokens without allowed MCP permissions
Fixed a bug where sometimes images created by MCPs are not showing up
Fixed a bug where sometimes the plugin chips not working
Fixed a bug where the "thinking" blocks will sometimes expand erroneously
Fixed a bug where certain tabs would not open correctly
Fixed a bug where sometimes the model list would not load
Fixed a bug where in-app docs article titles would sometimes wiggle on scroll
Fixed a visual bug in Preset 'resolve conflicts' modal
Fixed a bug where sometimes Download button would continue showing for an already downloaded model
Fixed a bug where chat sidebar buttons wouldn't be visible on narrow screens
Display model indexing errors as buttons rather than hints

Build 1

Welcome to the 0.4.0 Beta!